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Over a beer (or five) at Tootsie’s, camaraderie gained in the songwriter scene. But that wasn’t the only environment where song ideas and creative energy were thrown around.

“So we’d hang out at Tootsie’s and we’d drink beer,” Hall says, “but Tootsie’s wasn’t the only place. There were some after-hours places, mostly people’s houses and things. You know, pickers traditionally stay up all night. So when they’d close the beer joints or Tootsie’s, we’d sort of call each other on the phone and they’d say, ‘Well, so-and-so’s cooking some chicken or making some barbecue,’ and we’d just all wind up there and have these famous guitar pullings.”

“Pull” — or “pulling” — is an apt term. There was an element of mutual stretching and challenge to the act of passing the guitar around and hearing what songwriting peers were coming up with. Says Tillis, “We’d hang around and we would try to impress the other writers, you know.”

Bare fell into the habit of instigating guitar pulls before he moved to town. “I’d come down here from the road, from California or whatever, and I’d bundle up a bunch of songs,” he says. “I’d have five or six that I’d written. And I’d get a room at the Andrew Jackson [Hotel] at the time. I remember distinctly getting a room with a big washtub, galvanized washtub full of ice and beer, and Roger and Willie and Harlan and a whole bunch would come up and we’d start passing the guitar around singing songs.

“By the time Willie and Roger and all of them sang their songs, I might wind up with one that I thought was brilliant enough to sing. And then it would be ‘See what you guys think of this.’ Because I was in the big leagues then.”

The idea of a gang of gifted outsiders is powerfully appealing, almost a classic tale of underdogs making good. But, as Hall points out in his patient, perceptive way, it’s also a tad idyllic.

“We all knew one another, right?” he begins. “But it might be romantic to say we were all big pals or we were the Rat Pack of the mid-’60s or whatever. We were competitors, you know. We sort of kept an eye on one another. Like prize fighters circling in a ring, metaphorically speaking.”

“One of the most enjoyable things about doing the project was that I went back and watched 41 years worth of CMA shows. The first show in ’67 wasn’t televised, and they couldn’t locate the 1969 show. But the ’68 show and the ’70 show through now, I sat and watched all of them. And I loved it. I’ve attended the last 25 shows, but I’m in the press area and you don’t always get to see everything from there, so this gave me a chance to see all the moments I missed.”